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1 of 9This sign for the now-defunct Golden Bridge Beverage Company, located on a Webster Street building in Alameda, California, was restored in 2007.

Photo by Murilee Martin

2 of 9All around, a very useful car that will likely last until internal combustion is outlawed for street use. With one of these and a '66 Lancia Fulvia, you'd have most of your driving needs covered.

Photo by Murilee Martin

3 of 9As is the case with most cars, the Corolla has grown substantially in the last 15 years. Here it is next to a 2002 Camry, which has about the same exterior dimensions.

Photo by Murilee Martin

4 of 9I used to photograph old street-parked cars in Alameda, for my Jalopnik Down On the Street series. Here's a '67 Chevelle next to the Corolla... which weighs nearly as much as the Chevy.

Photo by Murilee Martin

5 of 9The trunk in this car is impressively spacious, fitting my big LeMons-judge suitcase even better than the trunk in my daily-driver Lexus LS400.

Photo by Murilee Martin

6 of 9Running errands for my relatives, I was able to fit an 8-foot-long closet rod inside the Corolla with nothing sticking out of a window.

Photo by Murilee Martin

7 of 9The Corolla has always been a sensibly invisible car, so you won't attract unwanted attention with this view.

Photo by Murilee Martin

8 of 9I used to cruise my '69 Corona in the San Leandro Marina parking lot (a big teenage hangout in the early 1980s), so I brought the '17 Corolla back for some photos.

9 of 9Next Gallery: 2017 Dodge Challenger GT First Drive A sacrilege that feels right

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2017 Toyota Corolla XSE: Race Organizer Review

On the Corolla's 50th anniversary and the 35th anniversary of my driver's license, retracing old Toyota tire tracks.

January 31, 2017

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I bought my first car, a 1969 Toyota Corona sedan in Soporific Beige™, for $50 in 1980, at age 14. My first driver's license followed in early 1982. Now that the Corolla is 50 years old and my driving privileges are 35 years old, it seemed like a good time to return to my San Francisco East Bay Area roots in a 2017 Corolla (because, sadly, the Corona has been out of production since 2003, not to mention out of the United States market since 1982).

The same spot, 1981 and 2017. Photo by Judy Greden

Toyota sells a special 50th Anniversary Edition Corolla, but one wasn't available during my visit and I got the top-trim-level XSE instead. Which was fine, given that my '69 Corona was a no-frills, four-on-the-floor model with slippery vinyl upholstery and a CONELRAD-enabled AM radio. The first thing I did with the Corolla was to recreate the only photographs of me with my Corona, in the exact same location on the Island That Rust Forgot. On the left, 1981; on the right, 2017.

Next to the 24 Hours of LeMons' Chief Perpetrator's Porsche at LeMons HQ. Photo by Murilee Martin

I headed to the nearby 24 Hours of LeMons HQ, where we had a high-level Race Organizer meeting (i.e., discussed ideas for future LeMons Rallies while eating Japanese food). The Corolla was exactly as you would expect— in fact, maybe insist— on a 21st-century Corolla being: competent, quick enough to keep up with chaotic Nimitz Freeway traffic, and devoid of all frivolity. The CVT transmission was acceptable, save for a strange tendency to hold at a short gear ratio for several seconds after backing off of a full-throttle application.

28 years ago, I watched Corollas (and Prizms) being built on this very spot. Photo by Murilee Martin

After that, I headed south on the Nimitz and toured the Tesla assembly plant in Fremont (more on that in a later post). When I had a summer warehouse job in the late 1980s, I made many deliveries to the plant when it was NUMMI, building Corollas and their Prizm brethren. The '17 Corolla made for pleasant driving in the usual stop-and-go-at-midday Bay Area traffic, with the SofTex upholstery feeling less sweaty than real leather and the sound system putting out sufficient thump for Paul Wall's latest.

Because junkyards are so important to me, I visited the first yard ever to sell me Toyota parts. Photo by Murilee Martin

Back when I started driving my '69 Corona, I broke parts right away. The very first junkyard I visited— to get a replacement gearshift lever, after my excessively exuberant shifting broke off the original on at the base— was Phelps Auto Wreckers in San Leandro. I decided that this would be a good location for a glamor shot for the '17 Corolla, and so I traversed a frighteningly potholed mud driveway to get there. The Corolla did a fine job dealing with the terrible road surface, as you'd expect from a car that sells well in places like Ho Chi Minh City and Lahore. After that, a bit of cruising in some of the other East Bay spots my Corona traveled back in 1982.

If you want real passion in a new car, get an Alfa Romeo 4C. Then get a Corolla to go with it, for the other 99% of driving tasks. Photo by Murilee Martin

For all the talk of reviving the spirit of the AE86 Corolla, I would prefer to see the spirit of the AE82 FX16 GT-S Corolla, the versatile front-wheel-drive hot hatch that was the last really fun US-market Corolla. That's unlikely to happen, though, so the Corolla remains what it has been for most of its half-century: a car that will give you decades of no-jive commuting.